Wednesday, July 06, 2016

The message to the 'Palestinians' is clear

If you were expecting State Department spokesman John Kirby to say something about terror attacks in Israel last week, you were disappointed with Tuesday's State Department briefing. Here's the sum total of what they had to say about Israel.

QUESTION: Do you have a comment on the Israeli settlement construction announcement?

MR KIRBY: We’re aware of reports that the Government of Israel
intends to advance plans for hundreds of housing units in Israeli
settlements in the West Bank as well as East Jerusalem. If it’s true,
this report would be the latest step in what seems to be a systematic
process of land seizures, settlement expansions, and legalizations of
outposts that is fundamentally undermining the prospects for a two-state
solution. We oppose steps like these, which we believe are
counterproductive to the cause of peace. In general, we’re deeply
concerned about settlement construction and expansion in East Jerusalem
and the West Bank, and the design – and the – I’m sorry, the designation
of land throughout the West Bank for exclusive Israeli use.

As the Quartet report highlights, since the beginning of the Oslo
process in 1993, the population of settlements has more than doubled,
with a threefold increase in Area C alone. Currently, there is at least
570,000 Israeli settlers living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Moreover, approximately 100 settlement outposts in Area C have been
built without formal Israeli Government approval, making them illegal
even under Israeli law. Again, as the Quartet report makes clear, these
actions risk entrenching a one-state reality and raise serious questions
about Israel’s long-term intentions.

QUESTION: Given that you raise the idea of this as a
systematic process of land – land expropriation or land seizures or
however you put it, what is the U.S.’s systematic response beyond just
saying this is bad every time? Do you have a systematic approach to
counteracting this trend that is blocking peace, in your opinion?

MR KIRBY: Our approach has been consistent throughout. First
of all, calling it like we see it and not being afraid to do that;
having tough discussions with Israeli leaders about this and being
willing to continue to do that; working inside the Quartet, and the
Quartet report addresses this pretty clearly as I just said; as well as
working with other members of the international community to try to see
if we can advance a two-state solution.

QUESTION: Do you – do you – the way I understood it was this
is a response to the violence. Do you see the notion of settlement
expansion as a consequence of violence as an appropriate countermeasure?

MR KIRBY: Look, I’m – I really am loath to get into analyzing
cause and effect here in terms of connecting that particular dot. We’re
obviously deeply concerned about violence and we condemn the recent
attacks. There’s – and we’ve said this before – no justification for
terrorism, no justification for the violence, no justification for the
taking or maiming of innocent life. And so we’re going to continue to
look for leaders in the region to do what they need to do, take the
affirmative steps that are required, and act – demonstrate leadership to
take down the tensions to reduce the violence to get us to help create
the conditions for a two-state solution. That doesn’t change, however,
at all our opposition to settlement activity, which we believe is
illegitimate.

QUESTION: I have a last one, tangentially related. The wife of
a man killed in a West Bank attack was an American citizen. I think the
car was shot at and it was just another American – I think it might
have been Hebron – another American who almost died in this case. Are
you having conversations with the Palestinians about the rising American
death toll in this wave of violence?

MR KIRBY: Obviously, we’re – any death and any injury is
significant when it results from this sort of violence. And so our
conversations with leaders on both sides are about, again, taking steps
to reduce the violence so that innocent people can go about their lives –
all innocent people can go about their lives.

There was NO condemnation from the State Department - and certainly none from Hussein Obama.

And then there was a little more, but still no condemnation:

QUESTION: Do you think that that --

QUESTION: But your first job’s to protect Americans --

MR KIRBY: And we take that very --

QUESTION: -- and there are --

MR KIRBY: And we take that very seriously.

QUESTION: Well, a lot – there’s been several now, I think, killed in this wave of violence --

MR KIRBY: Yeah.

QUESTION: -- more than in a lot of places where you have --

MR KIRBY: We take that – no, we take that very seriously, but --

QUESTION: -- deeper engagement.

MR KIRBY: Well, I’m not going to --

QUESTION: Even military engagement in some places.

MR KIRBY: I’m not going to detail the specifics of diplomatic
discussions we may be having on this. I can tell you obviously we take
that responsibility very seriously. But more broadly speaking, we want
to see all innocent life protected.

QUESTION: And do you think that the Palestinian attackers are
attacking Americans on purpose? Do you think that they are targeting
Americans?

MR KIRBY: As I said, I’m not going to analyze each and every specific act here from the podium, Said.

QUESTION: Just to follow up on Brad’s question, do you ask the
Palestinians to investigate whether there’s actually been deliberate
attacking or deliberate targeting of Americans?

MR KIRBY: We want – first of all, we want the attacks to stop.

QUESTION: Right, I understand. But things that have already taken place.

MR KIRBY: And obviously – obviously we would – we – and we’ve
said this before – we welcome thorough, complete investigations on these
matters, transparent investigations by all sides. But I’m not going to
get into a discussion of each and every one.

QUESTION: According to the Israeli press, the Palestinian
Authority is getting ready to cut off all relation with the Quartet
because they feel that the report was completely biased towards Israel.
First of all, are you aware of these reports? And second, are you having
a conversation with the Palestinians on this very issue?

MR KIRBY: I think what we’ve seen is a PLO statement that
takes issue with some aspects of the Quartet report, and that’s our
understanding, is that this is more a statement of their concerns and
objections to the report itself. And as I said last week, we fully
expected that there would be objections, that there will be concerns,
that not everybody would like everything that they read in there. But
I’ll say it like I said last week – I’ll say it again – both sides had
input and we valued – welcomed and valued that input.

QUESTION: Okay.

Again, no condemnation of 'Palestinian' terrorism.

And in case you missed it, look at Kirby's opening statement.

MR KIRBY: I have some comments here at the top that I want to
make, certainly regarding what happened over the weekend. We strongly
condemn the recent spate of deadly terrorist attacks that have been
focused on civilians, including women and children, and which have
brutally taken hundreds of lives from Istanbul to Dhaka to Baghdad to
the attacks in Saudi Arabia. These acts have shown no respect for human
life, whether young or old, male or female, Muslim or non-Muslim. These
terrorists murdered without discretion. We cannot say whether these
attacks were coordinated or whether they were conducted by independent
opportunists. As you know, investigations are still ongoing, and I’m not
going to get ahead of those processes. I’d refer you to those countries
to talk about it.

But what we do know is that the goal of these attacks was to attract
attention and to spread terror and to spread fear. They occurred during
and at the end of Ramadan, the holiest time of the year for Muslims.
Indeed, a Daesh spokesman himself called for targeting during this very
holy month. So what’s obviously evident is that Daesh certainly has no
respect for Muslim life, life in general, or any respect for Islam
itself.

Notice what's missing (added emphasis is mine).

Bottom line: No condemnation of the terror attacks against Jews. The message to the 'Palestinians' is clear.

3 Comments:

Why do you keep waiting for them to condemn it? It's never going to happen Carl. The guy is a rabid antisemite, and the liberal Jews purposely close their eyes to it. They care more about advancing their liberal agenda than they care about their brothers and sisters in Isreal. What scares me is my super conservative friend who moved to Israel a few years ago is turning into a liberal. What is going on there?

I missed Kirby's comments so thanks for posting this. I did see Ban Ki Moon's comments concerning Israeli plans to build housing units. He was nearly apoplectic in his strident comments. It was blatantly obvious that Ban was much more outraged about Israeli construction plans than he was about the brutal slaughter of the sleeping Hallel. His bland comment on the murder, barely registered, as intended. Mum was the word (of course) about Israel green-lighting the building of 600 Arab units, or the barbarian terrorist's mother spewing all her immense pride in her son's murderous achievement. The terror loving leadership of the PA immediately conferred Shahid status on the 17 y/o sociopath.

Camera conducted the following study (Arab Building in Jerusalem: 1967-1997) which found that Arab home construction has actually greatly outpaced Jewish building since Israel unified the city in 1967. Ban, The Quartet, EU & US are all willfully and dangerously delusional and I want them to shut-up already with their non-stop obfucation. Some of the Arab population were cheering and busy throwing large rocks at the mourners' cars as they made their way to her funeral. No comment about the 'moderate' peace partners and the 'moderate' Arab population. I'm beyond angry.

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I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com